Last Thursday, I started the Master Gardener class with Utah State University Extension at Thanksgiving Point. Larry Sagers is the primary instructor — he’s the guy who does the KSL Radio Greenhouse Show on Saturday mornings and writes a gardening column in the Deseret News. By the way, I want to know why the D-News doesn’t give him a columnist page for looking up his archived columns! But you can see several of his latest on their Home & Garden page.

I’m looking foward to learning a lot more technical horticulture stuff in this class. I’m also happy to be able (required, actually) to volunteer through the extension to help people with garden problems. I’ll have to do at least 40 hours of service work in the next year to get my Master Gardener certificate.

After the class, I asked Larry about my apple problem this year. I don’t recall if I wrote that I had no blossoms at all from my two apple trees this year. It was a huge disappointment, after they’d produced well for around five years straight. Larry said that I didn’t thin the blossoms enough last spring. Even before the June thinning, you’re supposed to pluck out some of the blossoms. He said there is a “king” blossom in the middle of a cluster and smaller blossoms around it. The king should be the only one allowed to produce fruit. By allowing too many blossoms to remain on the tree and to start developing, it took too much energy out of the tree for next year’s crop of blossoms. Who knew apple trees were so picky? I thought they were darn tough! He also said this next spring will be a “snowball” blossom experience on these trees, and it will be important to thin out that snowball.

Here’s an example of a king blossom from spring of 2007. I’m not sure if his advice about plucking out the non-king blossoms will apply in other years or just this coming year when I’m trying to get the tree back to annual production. I’ll have to ask.

Also, I inspected my nectarine tree this weekend and noticed three or four spots where a gummy, clear sap had oozed out of the trunk. They were not down by the ground but up a few feet, where the main branches begin. I hope these aren’t signs of peach tree borers. I was lax in my spraying this summer, because the apples weren’t producing, so I didn’t have my regular bi-weekly spraying going on. Usually, when I spray the apples, I’ll go over to the nectarine and just spray the trunk to keep the borers out. I don’t usually spray the nectarine fruit, because they don’t get a lot of bugs. But since I didn’t have a regular spraying routine once the cherries were done around the 1st of July, I haven’t sprayed the nectarine trunk since then. I’ll have to watch for any signs of disease in the tree next year.